Infighting within South Africa’s political class has spilled over into the markets repeatedly this year, weakening the country’s investment climate.

The soap opera of South African politics has often drifted perilously close to farce, but this year investors are not laughing.

In June, the public prosecutor Busisiwe Mkhwebane opined that the South African Reserve Bank should focus less on targeting inflation, which has fluctuated around the central bank’s target of 6% this year, and instead strive for promoting growth. The markets interpreted it as an explicit threat to the independence of the SARB, bond yields spiked and the currency fell.